A nice old photo story

[Gormy Cuss]

Century-old Oakland photos identified by former owner's nephew

Kevin Fagan, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

The mystery of the century-old photos is solved.

Fourteen years after she found 68 yellowed, tattered pictures squirreled away in her Oakland house, Gailen Runge finally got to hand them to their rightful owner this week - and to learn the answers to the secrets they had held for so long, so frustratingly, as she peered at the images for clues.

The heir to the photos of bowler-clad gentlemen and elegant Victorian ladies, it turns out, is 74-year-old Robert Martin of Alameda, whose late uncle Harry Lima hid the pictures all over his bungalow in the Oakland hills before selling it in 1993 to Runge.

Martin said he was reading The Chronicle on Monday morning when he suddenly yelped in surprise and then teared up. He pointed to the front page and yelled to his wife, "That's my family!"

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/09/12/MNQGS3GEU.DTL

[LuckyLib]

1. Isn't that great? I was looking at Ancestry at a surname bulletin area where a woman posted

that she had several post-card photos of a family that had names on the back. The names rang a bell, I called my 83 year old mother, and it turns out they were all cousins, aunts, and uncles from a wing of her Swedish immigrant family. The woman who had them was thrilled to find relatives, and sent them along with her good wishes. The internet has some amazing possibilities, and connecting photos with family is one of them.